China Mobile Shanghai races ahead with winning small cells formula

They say there can only be one winner, but Nokia Networks and China Mobile Shanghai recently shared victory honors in the race to deploy the world’s first TD-LTE Advanced Heterogeneous Network (HetNet), incorporating Nokia Flexi Zone small cells.

In April, Shanghai hosted one of the world’s most glamorous sports events which saw around 145,000 visitors – including 69,000 peak hour China Mobile users and 49,000 4G TD-LTE peak users – being served by the very latest in mobile network technology. The TD-LTE users accounted for 80% of the total traffic, and total throughput was an amazing 466 Gb, up 150% from the same event last year!

The event also saw the world’s first use of TD-LTE Carrier Aggregation using a commercial chipset at an international sports event.

Small cells handle record-breaking loads

Nokia Networks implemented the world’s first TD-LTE Advanced HetNet solution with carrier aggregation to power China Mobile Shanghai’s network at the event.

As well as the fast-moving action in front of them, there was also high-speed traffic behind the scenes as China Mobile Shanghai made full use of the Nokia TD-LTE-Advanced HetNet solution. Incorporating Nokia Flexi Zone small cells, the solution ensured that subscribers enjoyed a world-class experience during the entire event. In fact, the Flexi Zone small cells as well as the Flexi Multiradio 10 Macro Base Station supported a record-breaking 600 simultaneous active LTE users per cell – beating our previous record of 400 per Flexi Zone at the Xiamen Marathon.

The small cells deployment enabled China Mobile to totally outperform its rivals in terms of user experience, with a fast download rate during the busiest hour.

Twenty Flexi Zone small cells in Band 41 were deployed in addition to existing macro sites in Band 39 and Band 41, including three truck-mounted units, to provide an underlay that boosted data traffic performance substantially. During the event itself, the small cells off-loaded close to 50% of all traffic from the macro layer.

Seeing the statistics post-event, it was clear that only small cells with macro parity and macro capacity can hope to support such large traffic volumes, demonstrating that Nokia has the only small cell solutions to cope with very high hot zone demands: When fans want speed and power, we can deliver.

Talk to us about your hot zone challenges! You can read more about Nokia Flexi Zone here and see our press release here.

About the author

Stephane Daeuble

Stephane is responsible for Small Cells and Flexi Zone global product marketing at Nokia. A self professed IT geek and gadget guy, he knows firsthand the value of high speed connectivity that Small Cells provide, and has been an active industry advocate on the role they will play in future HetNets and Ultra-Broadband. Connect with Stephane on LinkedIn